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Where Are You Outsourcing Your Challenges?

The cost of avoiding difficulty.

Kathleen Smith

Jan 8

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South African Vervet monkeys grooming. Source: Shutterstock

I recently finished reading David Epstein’s book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. He also has an excellent Substack, writing recently about how London taxi drivers and ambulance drivers have a larger hippocampus because they do so much spatial reasoning every day (compared to bus drivers). This lowers their risk of dying from Alzheimer’s.

Epstein uses the psychological term “desirable difficulty” to describe cognitively challenging tasks with long-term benefits. In other words, using a “brain-first approach” before or instead of outsourcing the difficulty to others or tech.

I think this largely describes the family systems work I do with folks. People are considering which desirable difficulty in relationships they want to engage. I’m also trying not to become the person who is outsourced to do the thinking. Hence the groans whenever I ask, “What do you think?”

So where are you outsourcing your thinking and challenges?

Are you:

Bringing a challenge to your therapist or boss before you think (and maybe write) about it.
Asking your partner or friend if you made the right choice, before you consider if you’ve made the right choice.
Turning on your GPS before considering if you know the way.
Asking the Internet before getting clearer about your own thinking.
Texting a friend a question you could easily find out yourself.
Letting an algorithm determine what’s important to you.
Looking up something you can’t remember right away at the dinner table, thus ruining the vibe.
Tracking a family member via tech before considering if they can be responsible for themselves.

People get the most out of therapy when they take what David Epstein and others call the “brain-first” approach. When they set aside the time to consider what their challenges are and what they’d like to do with them.

So where do you need to take more of a brain-first approach in life?

I need to pay attention to when I’m workshopping challenges with others before doing my own thinking. I should probably turn off my GPS every now and then to see if I can find a new place. Think twice before I search for opinions on social media that confirm my biases. Try to remember where I parked the car before I check my phone to see.

But I think the relationships challenges are often the hardest. We have our familiar dances of avoiding, overfunctioning, etc. A little brain-first work before contact is one way to interrupt them.

Let me know how it goes. Feel free to shout “Brain first!” when you’re tempted to automatically outsource the answer. It will probably help.

Questions:

Where are you outsourcing to avoid desirable difficulty?
What difficulty is worth engaging in relationships? Other tasks?
Where are people or tech companies more than happy to provide answers for you?
What would be the evidence you had more brain-first functioning?

Similar posts:

News from Kathleen

Reading: The Secret Life of Cows by Rosamund Young. Cannot recommend this little gem enough for your nervous system.

Check out my online Feb 17 writing workshop with the Family Systems Institute in Sydney. (Note that it will be the evening of Monday Feb 16 for many of you).

The paperback version of True to You is dropping in March. You can preorder it wherever you buy books.

Email me if you want me to speak to your group or are interested in doing family systems work.

Buy my books True to You and Everything Isn’t Terrible for more in-depth stories of people working on their relationships and themselves. If you love them, consider giving them a review on Amazon so other folks can find them. If you haven’t gotten the free digital workbooks for them, email me.